From 1972 to 1990, Alexandra Fuller, known to friends and family as Bobo, grew up on several farms in southern and central Africa. Her father joined up on the side of the white government in the Rhodesian civil war and was often away fighting against the powerful black guerrilla factions. Her mother, in turn, flung herself into their African life and its rugged farmwork with the same passion and maniacal energy she brought to everything. She taught...

In this hard-hitting novel, first published in 1924, the murky personal relationship between an Englishwoman and an Indian doctor mirrors the troubled politics of colonialism. Adela Quested and her fellow British travelers, eager to experience the "real" India, develop a friendship with the urbane Dr. Aziz. While on a group outing, Adela and Dr. Aziz visit the Marabar caves together. As they emerge, Adela accuses the doctor of assaulting her. While...

"Bound for Antarctica, where polar explorer Ernest Shackleton planned to cross on foot the last uncharted continent, the Endurance set sail from England in August 1914. In January 1915, after battling its way for six weeks through a thousand miles of pack ice and now only a day's sail short of its destination, the Endurance became locked in an island of ice. For ten months the ice-moored Endurance drifted northwest before it was finally crushed. But...

"Alice Wright marries handsome American Bennett Van Cleve hoping to escape her stifling life in England. But small-town Kentucky quickly proves equally claustrophobic, especially living alongside her overbearing father-in-law. So when a call goes out for a team of women to deliver books as part of Eleanor Roosevelt's new traveling library, Alice signs on enthusiastically. The leader, and soon Alice's greatest ally, is Margery, a smart-talking, self-sufficient...

"As a Special Constable, Teddy Creque is the only police presence on the remote, sun-drenched island of Anegada, nestled in the heart of the British Virgin Islands. In all his years on the job, Teddy has never considered the possibility that he might have to address an actual crime on his peaceful island. That is, until he receives a hysterical call about a dead man on the beach. Indeed, Teddy is shocked to discover Paul Kelliher, a biologist who...

Beautiful, determined Tasmin Berrybender, daughter of a wealthy, aristocratic Englishman who has brought his family to America in 1830 on an adventure of exploration in the just-opening West, meets and falls in love with frontiersman Jim Snow, an Indian-fighter and part-time preacher known as "the Sin Killer."

THINGS FALL APART tells two overlapping, intertwining stories, both of which center around Okonkwo, a “strong man” of an Ibo village in Nigeria. The first of these stories traces Okonkwo's fall from grace with the tribal world in which he lives, and in its classical purity of line and economical beauty it provides us with a powerful fable about the immemorial conflict between the individual and society. The second story, which is as modern as...

When a peculiar letter arrives inviting Armand Gamache to an abandoned farmhouse, the former head of the Sûreté du Québec discovers that a complete stranger has named him one of the executors of her will. Still on suspension, and frankly curious, Gamache accepts and soon learns that the other two executors are Myrna Landers, the bookseller from Three Pines, and a young builder. None of them had ever met the elderly woman. The will is so odd and...

"Beginning naked in the darkness, Brian Brett takes us on a journey through a summer's day that also tells the story of his affectionately named Trauma Farm - exploring the garden, orchards, fields, the mysteries of livestock and poultry, the social intricacies of rural communities - and eventually encounters a magnificent deer in the silver moonlight of a magical pasture." "Both a memoir and a natural history of the small mixed farm, this eighteen-year-long...

Set in a small town in rural France in 1960. Vianne Rocher and her pre-teen daughter move to town and open a chocolate shop across from the local church just as Lent is beginning. Vianne's warm heart and delicious chocolate win over some of the townspeople, but the mayor and others object to her freethinking and iconoclastic ways.